Wow, this was a rough week. lots of tension. My new Jackie Button app got rejected, our update got rejected and Pocket God is slowly slipping back down the rankings. I'm so happy the update was released today, I had a nightmare the other day that we were going to have to wait another week because Apple didn't like the word sacrifices in our leadboard or the fact that we show the Pygmies skeletons in this update. Just glad it's out!

So, it was actually really fun playing with Feint tonight, got to chat with a lot of people live in the game and told a bunch of them to come over to Touch Arcade to hear about the new update and to join in asking about new updates. If anyone is in the Pocket God Chat Rooms, please help anyone out that is asking questions about the game. Speaking about asking when the next update is coming out, Hodapp decided to drink our kool aid this week and join the Pocket Borg, its good to have another nice sarcastic voice in the mix.

So, this update is really cool. like even cooler than all the other previous updates, but probably not cooler than the updates that will follow. We added names for all the pygmies, so you can customize them and add the names of your teachers, classmates, or friends as you toture them. You can also name your tribe and give each Pygmy their own description. We also added detailed stats for each pygmy and the tribe as a whole. so, you can see the top 5 sacrifice types for each Pygmy (we will probably add a way to see all sacrifices and their counts later), you can see all the food that they have eaten and each pygmy has a mood depending on how many sacrifices you make compared to the amount of food (gifts) you give them. Some of you might be wondering about the gift leaderboard on in Feint and this is for 1.13, is has some people already in it because the beta testers have been using it this week. It will show the top gift givers in the game.

In game, there is a toggle for showing or hiding the name labels of each Pygmy. I think this is a good step forward, it is definately moving toward a game now and although the rules for governing their mood is pretty simple now, we can exapnd on it in the future and add more management and stats for your tribe. We can also start setting up leaderboards for wierd stats like how many coconut bounces you achieved, the farthest flick, or how many pygmies you managed to electrocute in the hurricane without stopping the hurricane.

On the technical side we added a font engine to the game. We were in a huge need of adding dynamic text. I'm a little embarassed to say this, but all the text to this point has been burned into the bitmaps for the game. But we came up with a really cool system for defining custom fonts and laying out a screens in flash. The new layout tool saves a ton of memory because we can reuse all the existing game assets for our help screens instead of precreating each screen in photoshop and adding it to the texture atlas. We were getting to the point where we could only fit 7 help screens into our game and we kept having to jam more and more content into each screen. but now Allan created 13 screens with the tool and it freed up an entire texture atlas that we can start using for more game sprites.

Another thing about this update is that our icon is now synced with the update, the ant icon is shipping with the ant update and we will continue to do this from now on.

Here's the titles of the next 3 updates. it's a trilogy.

A New Home
Tyrannosaurus Strikes Back
Return of the Pygmy

After Return of the Pygmy, we will raise our price to a whopping $1.99. If you know anyone that doesnt have pocket god yet, they can save 50% by buying it now

We have so many ideas for new updates, we want to keep doing them for at least a few more months and we are hoping that with a price increase, we can afford to keep doing them as our sales numbers start to go down. We just came up with an amazing way to pull off a Tsunami, it will be really cool. not sure where this will lie after Return of the Pygmy, but we have that, we really want to do the change tempurature update, do something awesome with the statue, and add more stats, leaderboards, and add some mini games.

I'll just come out and say it: Pocket God is AWESOME! It is always on my phone and I love all the updates. Devs, you guys are so involved in the community and so keen to please us Touch/Phone users... It almost makes me verklempt. So from me to you: KUDOS.

Sounds great. This is another big step forward into becoming a game. Great job you guys. The chat rooms are a little random- when guys talk about stupid things.... other than that it's enjoyable.

I don't know if this would work but I mentioned this before in the last thread... I was thinking that having building blocks (just regular blocks) to build a pyramid or something would be fun, and you could also have them trapped and freaking out from not finding a way out. They can climb and jump or whatever...

I don't think I read anything about the statue... is there going to be something big since I never hear you talk about it.

oh and i found a bug: when burning Pygmy with the magnifying glass if you move it just after they start on fire they will go back to normal (the fire will stop) and they will be fine.... just letting you know.

Sounds great. This is another big step forward into becoming a game. Great job you guys. The chat rooms are a little random- when guys talk about stupid things.... other than that it's enjoyable.

I don't know if this would work but I mentioned this before in the last thread... I was thinking that having building blocks (just regular blocks) to build a pyramid or something would be fun, and you could also have them trapped and freaking out from not finding a way out. They can climb and jump or whatever...

I don't think I read anything about the statue... is there going to be something big since I never hear you talk about it.

The building block idea is a really cool idea, not sure which update this will come in, but it woudl either be further down the line or part of Pocket God 2.0.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SuperPaperSam

Love the update cant wait for more!!

oh and i found a bug: when burning Pygmy with the magnifying glass if you move it just after they start on fire they will go back to normal (the fire will stop) and they will be fine.... just letting you know.

This is on purpose, maybe we can have them jump in the water, but you can pull away the magnifying glass and turn them back to normal at any time before they explode.

also, just wanted to plug my new personal twitter, I still need to make it look cooler but am just starting out. the main pocket god twitter is only announcements and is fairly safe for all ages, mine will probably be a little more rated R.

About Us

"TouchArcade covers the latest games and apps for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch. We are the largest site dedicated
to iPhone and iPod Touch gaming."

Promotional Codes

While we now accept iTunes Promotional Codes for games, we can't guarantee that your app will be reviewed or covered. Only one promotion code is required. Feel free to send promo codes to tips@toucharcade.com.

While we appreciate the promo codes, notable app pre-announcements and preview copies are also of interest to our readers. Please feel free to contact us at the same email address about these opportunities.

Note: we rarely (if ever) solicit developers directly for promo codes. If you receive such an email, please contact us.

Advertising

We have advertising opportunities available to iPhone and iPod Touch developers. If interested, please contact us at ads@toucharcade.com.

Press Contact

We welcome news releases, previews, screenshots and video links for existing or upcoming iPhone and iPod Games. We can't promise a personal reply but we do try to evaluate every title submitted. Please send press releases or general inquiries to tips@toucharcade.com.